Mikhail Gorbachev was the last head of state of the Soviet Union, and helped to bring about a peaceful end to the Cold War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. He has since remained active in global and humanitarian affairs, most notably through his leadership of the Gorbachev Fo… read more

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Mr. Gorbachev has hit upon the most serious problem of the era. Not water per se, but the waters we travel. A root cause analysis--as global chaos takes its course, classic controls for peace and prosperity dissolve into sand. Or rather, there are controls of a new nature, but we've not the material appendages to grasp them, nor the mental acuity to use them even if we could. But there is a way out if we have a wiil to...

For humanity has become a ghost ship--a 19th, barely 20th century rickety craft upon the choppy seas of the 21st century. The captains of world politics, leader of state, finance, and culture relay their sluggish orders based on the ill-advice of rusted economic compass and maps oxidized beyond recognition by the heat of egoism and greed. The first mates of worn, bloated bureaucracies bark the orders to underlings who too filter actions through various layers of self-interest and lethargy. But it matters not, as the slow motion, out of sinc hands of the specters pass through rope and wheel without effect upon the drfting ship accelerating and spinning into the growing chaos. Still, there is a way out if we have a will too...

The last remnants of living energy, it seems, is with terrorism--running in ideological fervor to happily slaughter stereotyped innocents for the cause (and that cause appears to be the global enslavement of humanity, and the desecration of God's name). To increase chaos and misery--aye, that they can still accomplish. Yet there is a way out, if we have a will too...

Yet all these feel secure relative to the majority of the crew in anguish or the verge thereof, of basic necessities. Secure? Do we not yet know that if the ship sails on as such, we are all dead men? However, indeed, there is a way out--new life and success, guaranteed, as testified over and over by Nature itself.

The controls are no longer few, but they are billions, fractal in nature. The wisdom to sense, analyze, and coordinate action--that lies in the potential connections between all those control contacts. Chaos, you see, always brings with it a "fractal orbit" --- a kind of repeating pattern --into macro and micro, of the configuration of elements in the chaos, and the rate of how those weighted points of configuration change over time. Nature answers this with a community of the ignorant and powerless--which per force naturally communicate, relate, and join into a mutually responsible network. The network itself becomes a "swarm intelligence" far beyond the capabilities of its members--be they bacteria, rooting grasses, insect colonies, schools of fish, avian flocks--or yes, above all with potential beyond the imagination, global humanity. It sense the fractal orbits and locks in like the phase-lock loop of a radio attaching to signal, or the entraining of a neural network learning pattern. Our brain cells individually are mind numbing dumb--but look what they can do together as one. -- So can we. So can we what?! So can we match our global chaotic environment -- not to try to conquer Nature, but to fully partner with it.

This has worked over and over in nature, but it has never been attempted on such a grand scale. But Nature, it seems, has chosen its most advanced students for this very special undertaking. All the really hard work will be for that near future state of humanity as a whole. For us now, just as the natural cases mentioned, the task is relatively simple--to form the network itself at the cellular level. This means educating ourselves to the interdependence priorities of our integrating global world--that balancing others' best interest is the only way to accomplish our best interest. And then to implement the media and social tool that will provide the right environment the incubating womb of mutually concerned relationship (the happiest kind too, BTW). After this, we would just let Nature, and our higher self, take its course.

Alternatively, we can continue to trust to the UN and the like. As with the water issue, I'm sure we can count on them, 50 years after the human race is extinct, to come out with a definitive ruling on where we can all be buried.

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